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Unconference Notes

The third day featured a facilitated Open Space "unconference" for participants to delve deeper into the themes explored during the previous two days. Breakout topics were generated by the attendees based on the issues that were of greatest relevance, interest and importance to them, and focused around:

HIV and other diseases epidemics in Africa those could be facilitated by global warming. Africa is under highest risk relating to epidemics.

Deforestation in Central America countries due to agriculture and raising of sea level. Severe needs of resource management in these countries. The most urgent need is preservation of tropical forest ecosystems.

Possible next steps:

To continue sharing our ideas about global problems using www.globalmindshare.org and other possibilities.

Shawn: We need to go carbon negative; infrastructure being built right now. Embedded carbon issue.

Dan: Every product should be a green product so you don't have to make that explicit choice anymore!

George: Feeding the world without destroying the planet symposium with major corporations. Coca Cola: Consumers are beginning to expect sustainability/naturalness in all products, but they are mostly not willing/able to pay additionally for it. DuPont: zero injuries, zero defects, zero emissions. How many people know about that? How did they get there? Are they leading other companies in that direction? Zero Emmissions as an approachable goal.

Shawn: Goal is to go beyond doing no harm.

Pia: Nicaraguan farmers could get funding from Israel to grow Kosher food! Huge market for this.

Shawn: Technical solutions are available, but sociologically how do we get there? Connecting with people around shared goals. Community building

Pia: We have to go door to door to reach people, build grassroots support

George: OPEC tax has been about $230/ton of CO2! Price signals are not equalized. Externalities are not priced in. We need a carbon tax. We need to reduce the raw cost of the fuel but keep the retail price up. South Korea Green Growth initiative, now at the UN

where is the expertise? To what extent can we rely on the crowd/community in evaluating (level of knowledge, level of commitment)

ideation, synthesis, arbitration limited time

Alex: we should think of *concurrent* blends of ideation, synthesis, and arbitration if our goal is to eliminate/minimize bias - randomize the order of how you present things if you have the end goal in mind, the purity of having something that's completely crowdsourced, may not always be the right thing

one axis: identify the best ideas 2nd axis: identify how closely is the idea aligned with the goals of the solicitor (a fit / not a fit)

Emanuel: consider recognition of reviewers Alex: we can think of components. for example, the public can do a good job of judging/predicting public uptake of proposals. Experts may need to do specific small parts. George: we did 3 layered voting: community, crowd, experts and then some smart way of weighting those ratings.

Alex: there's a question of the balance of the number of submitters

another model: everyone gets 10 votes.

diversity is important. representation is important for diversity we should consider a dual-council (representative, and representation-blind. like senate and congress). especially when we introduce geography in the next round of contests!

solutions can be replicated globally: climate is global but sometimes problems vary from region to region. Some regions are currently under-facilitated technologically, especially the developing countries.

participatory approach makes people feel that they belong. promotes self-motivation to take actions on climate issues.

allow users to contribute by simple actions (eg vote) that can have big impacts. The "heavy-lifting" of processing user feedback could be provided by automated backend computer intelligent techniques (data mining and knowledge discovery methodologies, etc)

sub-component of this idea is a potential candidate for CoLab Contest for 2014.

Initially, we spent our time getting everybody up to speed on our particular situation.

The main new idea was to try to enlist the fusor community as a core group. These are hobbyists who've built small fusion reactors for fun.

Aside from that....this is a difficult problem that we've been trying to figure out for a while, and some of us discussed for a couple hours at dinner the night before. Not much new came out of this session. The earlier crowdfunding discussion was more interesting.

It could be that it's less productive to focus on a particular project like this, since you spend so much time catching everybody up on the details, and since you tend to draw a smaller crowd, mostly of people you've already been talking with.

Possible next steps:

The idea to target the fusor community was interesting. It's a pretty small community, but getting a good core of enthusiasts is an essential first step. Will try this and see how they respond.

There is due diligence necessary to make it work well enough the first time around.

There is openness for going with existing platforms.

Concern: raising expectations that may not be fulfillable. Put boundaries on it, make it part of the proposal but make it explicit that these "needs" may not be provided to winners. Just try to supply those that we can.

Pia Jensen: in Nicarauga crowdfunding is quite foreign. History of actually following through on funding is bad. Konrad: supply side, how does the money get in; demand side: how can it be used to encourage supply rather than discourage it. Supply side mostly in US & Europe

in developing world; usually an intermediary that vets the demand side; people/groups who use the money.

For reward funding: keep in mind the rewards can be very resource-intensive. it should at least be a part of what you're going to do anyway (or expressly resource-light)

how to get the broad base for small donations: MIT could help with press contacts, (newsletters), still use a preexisting crowdfunding platform

Get the publicity/knowledge going before starting the official kickstarter/indiegogo campaign

specifically for CoLab- seek a strategic partnership with one of the platforms.

rewards-type projects must deliver; need to have product instead of ideas

from MIT "poor economics" class kiva funds entrepreneurs; always very small projects though. Opportunity for larger funding of larger projects in these areas.

What about non-kickstarter type things; limits to Kickstarter; arts and technology projects with specific outcomes. They exist. Sun Funders- for-profit working on last-mile power supply Kiva has evolved- 50-100k loans for some projects

Back to CoLab 2014: do we use a preexisting platform or make one? Peter J wants to make a broadly scaled Kickstarter- technology projects work, and can use electronic rewards

Could use preexisting platform but use some MIT "abstraction layer" for how the money flows. Maybe just one crowdfunding "project". Could have each CoLab donation go partly for the funder's choice and partly to the crowd's choices (winners' fund)

theecohub.org is an example of a crowdfunding platform does range of proposals mean a range of crowdfunding platforms, or do you go with one which is broad enough to handle all?

For larger projects- bootstrapping of the crowdfunding, do it in stages.

Some things don't need money; they need other things- specific features of CoLab to facilitate this? Actions tab?

Each proposal- list of things that are needed supply side- list of things that are offered.

Will entail a broadening of how the website is used.

Pete's greens economic model.

Possible next steps:

Work to fuse, or at least connect, various fusion communities.

This includes becoming active in more than one community first.

Work on video, model, etc. to use as the educational-and-shiny thing for fusion community to bring in friends.

way in which we make decisions is not necessarily how we think about making those decisions - e.g. throwing more data at the non-believers vs changing how the idea/problem is presented - comparing for example neighbor's utility usage to encourage change - feedback

expressing things in terms of gain vs. loss - idea of loss is twice is twice as motivating as idea of gain

notion of do you believe in god - or in this context climate change - even if you don't believe there is "input" for other reasons - each action has its own benefits vs trying to convincing people to provide "input" based on for example the usual data argument

how we perceive things - current "answer" may be correct now and in ten years it may not

colors vs "shmolors"

cant change their minds but can change actions for things we can agree on

what is good for the children - does it matter - if CO2 is rising - if we can reduce isnt that good. mental solutions vs. grand solutions

andrew hoffman addressing issue with how we dialog - psychology of emotion

for me (Pia) how do we help people understand that reforestation is just as vital as supporting a climate project that can be turned into a money making business.

China - air quality impacts on daily living - living in Hong Kong and having to make more money to mitigate the pollution risk to health.

bottom line dollar arguments speak loudest ... and the real threat of climate change events such as hurricane sandy... not necessary to speak of that event as climate change related - the damage speaks loudest.

threat dialog for resilience building - cities moving forward - Africa does not in most cases

NY is one of the cleanest cities in the world - how to influence others - NY has monetary resources while other cities do not have that "big bank" resource

Re-Insurance industry underwrites for direct insurers - managing risk international market down to local market (but it takes too long for that vital knowledge to reach "end users")

int he case of this conference - focus on profitable ventures vs. on actions that we know we can take that don make money but sequester carbon - tropical forests are the earth's lungs - without them there is no business in the future that will matter. viewing reforestation as a profitable venture.

rate changes - change of practices required - question of how long it takes to move ideas down to local insurers and cities

not all states are equal - for example California is well practiced in offsetting negative impacts in development - creating marsh areas - replacing lost ecosystems. "eco-banking"

weather - utilities - talking about emergency response plans, and based on what they have learned over the years - what can be done based on resources

concept that we have changed our dialog from personal psychology risk to corporate risk - it's all the same - when we need to bring people to the point at which actions are practical and effective.

"actions" being taken - one event recently - Cargill Coca Cola Mosaic - came to MIT asking - how can we feed the world without destroying the planet? as a side note: USDA asked (for a grant award) how do we resolve the problems inherent in large ag production. I (Pia) called them up and suggested breaking the large ag down to small, diverse plantations. No grant award required - it's a matter of perspective - will the big ag companies keep ruling or will small farmers/organized communities progress.... (Transition Town)

Climate CoLab has teamed up with Solve CoLab to run this contest. To participate, click "OK" below. When you save your proposal, you'll be able to see and make changes to it on either site – all edits and comments will be synced between the two platforms. We'll even create a linked account so you can log into Solve CoLab with your Climate CoLab username and password. It's easy!